Serbia's Maja Ognjenovic smiles for the camera next to coach Zoran Terzic on Friday

Serbia coach Zoran Terzic: Before this game we knew we must make our blocks and defense. It was the same in Nagoya, but we made a lot of mistakes there, especially in service and attack. Today, we made service mistakes but not in attack. Our attack tonight was almost perfect and the reason why tonight's win was easier than expected. I want to congratulate my team and Japan.

(Re. good game by setter Maja Ognjenovic): You cannot make a good attack if your setter doesn't do her job well. Today, Maja did her job at a really high level. Because of her and our attackers our offense was good against Japan. It's my very big luck that I have two very good setters and we can change them without any problem. So I hope in the next game you will see another way and (Ana) Antonijevic will have a game like Maja today.

Serbia No. 10 Maja Ognjenovic: We did a good job tonight. It was much easier than expected and it is a very important victory for us because with this win we are probably in the final eight. The main difference tonight was that we started more powerfully than in Nagoya and (last week) Japan played much better than tonight.

Japan coach Masayoshi Manabe: I knew that Serbia were in good shape. Today, we served OK but our blocking was bad. We tried to turn it around, but couldn't do it. We have to work on our defence.

Japan No. 3 Yoshie Takeshita: This was a very important game for us, but we played poorly and our defence was bad. We just couldn't play the way we wanted to and then it was all over.

Japan No. 12 Saori Kimura: Today, our blocking and receiving was very bad and we weren't able to change things around during the game.